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7

This is a duplicate that is the mother of all duplicates. To get an idea of what annoys people the most, simply search in the [bug] or [feature-request] tags and sort by highest votes.
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EtherFeb 1 '10 at 19:05

4

@AEther: Not necessarily true. A bad feature doesn't have to be a non-feature or a bug.
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Jonathan SampsonFeb 1 '10 at 19:09

2

Why would someone vote to close this as "Not Stack Overflow related"? This is a good question to have on meta.
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TroggyFeb 2 '10 at 1:22

I agree with pi, this needs a superduperupvote. :-)
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Brian KnoblauchFeb 2 '10 at 13:27

10

This is one of my favorite features. While I disagree with the Atwood from time to time, I appreciate having a clear and dedicated site owner. It's not easy to say no, especially when we complain so loudly...but let's be honest--a lot of our ideas suck.
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Michael HarenFeb 2 '10 at 14:32

If Jeff is the designer, then isn't "closed: status-bydesign" the same thing as "closed: because I say so"?
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David ThornleyFeb 9 '10 at 15:03

@David: no, not if the current behaviour was not "designed". This status is not appropriate on actual outright bugs that clearly were not intentional, but has been used to mean "won't bother to fix", e.g. the issues observed with voting and editing windows and also parts of the reputation cap calculation.
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EtherFeb 9 '10 at 19:39

@Ether: So he changes the design. He can do that. I understand frustration at annoying things that Jeff slaps some sort of "wont-fix" tag on, but 56 upvotes about the wording of that tag?
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David ThornleyFeb 10 '10 at 15:13

@Gnoupi: ooh, this would be my very first bounty won on any site! :D
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EtherJul 6 '10 at 16:55

5

+1 This is about customer communications. When my customers wants something hard, I explain why it's better to spend the time doing other features instead. I don't just shout "No!" and hang up the phone.
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MarkJJul 6 '10 at 19:32

Nonintuitive? More like: just doesn't work very well. How about giving us + - and real phrase searching. I'd prefer not to use google whenever I need to get quality search results on SO.
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user135186Feb 5 '10 at 14:25

1

I must admit I have had only good experiences with SO's search. Everything I've searched for (especially specific questions or answers) I've always found.
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PëkkaFeb 10 '10 at 11:42

I always phrase the question in the 'ask a question' screen. The recommendations search thingy always gives very accurate results. (So yes I think this qualifies as non-intuitive search)
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ToadJul 7 '10 at 7:03

Like @Toad ask questions for my searching. There are 3 problems with this technique. 1) Click a "Related Question" and browse back you have to tab to get the related questions again. 2) You only get the question. 3) Limited number of related questions.
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Tim MurphyJul 7 '10 at 10:34

The "fix" provided below is now part of the global feature itself, as such, this post will not make much sense to those who aren't familiar with the previous state of the feature.

The first time I clicked (accidentally) on the votes next to an answer/question and saw two 0's stacked, I thought it was a bug with the voting script (client-side). It wasn't until today that I actually learned that these stacked numbers (I've only seem 0/0) actually represent upvotes vs downvotes.

Now that I understand it, it's a great feature (not necessarily a good implementation though) - just confusing if you're not expecting it.

+1 One of the worst bits of GUI design I've seen recently. Oops, sorry - I have to remove it for you saying this is a "great feature".
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nb69307Feb 1 '10 at 18:54

1

@Neil: You're right; it is a poor UI. However, it is a great feature.
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SLaksFeb 1 '10 at 19:00

@NeilButterworth: I said the feature is great, not the implementation. :) There, updated the post.
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Jonathan SampsonFeb 1 '10 at 19:00

4

The tooltip explains what it is. Fractions seem pretty logical to me -- the number on top nearest the up arrow is upvotes, the number on the bottom nearest the down arrow is downvotes. shrug
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Jeff Atwood♦Feb 1 '10 at 19:17

5

@Jeff It makes sense once you understand it. You, having conceived the idea, can understand it rather well. I truly thought this was a bug with the voting script. Differentiating the UI for each number would go a long way, in my honest opinion. I don't want to be all-gripe though, thank you for implementing such a wonderful feature.
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Jonathan SampsonFeb 1 '10 at 19:19

2

I had the same reaction when I first accidentally discovered this feature.
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user27414Feb 1 '10 at 19:35

Would it be enough to simply use colours (blue or green on the top, red on the bottom)?
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EtherFeb 1 '10 at 19:38

4

@AEther: I think colors, as simple as they are, would accomplish a lot. Maybe even as simple as making the bottom number red.
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Jonathan SampsonFeb 1 '10 at 19:45

I can see why users without 3000 rep would want to be able to chip in, but they don't really help any,
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Gordon GustafsonFeb 4 '10 at 21:19

IIRC, it takes 2K rep to edit (and presumably to put the tag on), and 3K to vote to close, so you'd think there wouldn't be all that many people who can put the tags on and can't vote to close or migrate.
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David ThornleyFeb 9 '10 at 15:05

@David - Actually, retagging is possible at only 500 of reputation, without the right to edit the post. So from 500 to 3000, they put such tags (when they should flag it, eventually)
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GnoupiFeb 9 '10 at 16:23

@Gnoupi: Ah, somebody who either looks something up, or has a better IIRC than I do. Thank you. That does change things.
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David ThornleyFeb 10 '10 at 15:10

@David - As someone who climbed reputation recently in an objective to help moderating, I remember the steps, as I really "counted" them ;)
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GnoupiFeb 10 '10 at 16:13

People who post questions like this, questions that are sooo subjective and EVERYBODY has an opinion on. People who have insanely high reputation all have questions like this as their "best questions" even if they have no technical merit or insight.

It annoys me that the "Related" column on the right hand side on every question leads to a lot of false positives when searching (e.g. with Google). Conversely if "-" is used to filter the result (e.g. "-Java" to exclude hits containing Java) it leads to false negatives.

It may be possible to restrict the search using the tags, but the search engine syntax for this is complex and has to be remembered somehow.

@Juan - neither the FAQ nor the search seem to elaborate on what that means (FAQ just states it). Seems like it involves a lot of work only to send a message from time to time!
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WikisJul 6 '10 at 20:38

You can send a direct message to another user by comments, so as long as it is related to a previous comment, or an answer they posted. And that's all you need in a Q&A context. Direct messaging outside of this context means you want to talk outside of the Q&A, and it's more about socializing then.
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GnoupiJul 7 '10 at 7:04

@Gnoupi - not necessarily socializing. I had a question about security settings. The person concerned offered to give them to me (but may not have wanted to broadcast further). How could we solve the problem without direct messaging?
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WikisJul 7 '10 at 9:13

put your email address in your profile. Then if someone wants to send you a message directly, they can.
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ErikApr 1 '11 at 17:17

The fact that the comment controls are hidden and only show up on mouse over and the fact that they aren't <a> tags. This seriously sucks for anyone using conkeror and, I imagine, anyone using a screen reader. Though we, or maybe I as I might just be the only SO user using it, can now vote with out reaching for the mouse, the comment controls still elude me because of this complete pain in the butt markup.

Also, another thing that drives me insane is how poorly SO handles larger font sizes. I'm one of those people who jacks up the fonts to a minimum of 14. On SO this causes text to disappear behind ads on the right rather than wrapping.

The editor where I type in my answer. Most of it is fine, but I REALLY want a single return to show as a return! There are times I want just a single newline, but I can't get it.
1. Like a list
2. That is on a separate line for each number
3. Like this isn't, even though I'm typing it this way.

Yes, I know it is by design, yes I know Jeff has said this is the way it is, but it's still a bad UI.

My point is, people who bump posts to harvest rep.
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dreamlaxFeb 2 '10 at 2:41

Mostly, People bump posts to get answers. Bumping posts to get rep functions only when the question is very good.
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PëkkaFeb 3 '10 at 11:20

@Pekka, I suspect people also bump posts to re-expose their answer to a question, especially if it has a seemingly low amount of community support.
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dreamlaxFeb 3 '10 at 13:42

2

@dreamlax Still, then your answer needs to be good. As long as it's not bumping something every minutes for hours on end (which the system prevents anyway, I think) I must say I'm ok with it. A bad question or answer will not receive any more or less response from bumping.
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PëkkaFeb 3 '10 at 15:21

Also people who can't accept realities. OpenID blows, iPhone OS questions are just going to be a more important to corner once the iPad hits, and the fact that it's 3 different sites means I have to hit 3 separate URLs to see what's going on. Oh well actually I don't really go to superuser anymore since they don't allow iPhone questions.
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bpapaFeb 5 '10 at 3:54

3

On SU, we were all wondering where you went, we were really worried.
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GnoupiFeb 9 '10 at 14:10

4

-1 OpenID is the best authentication method in existence.
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uɐɯsO uɐɥʇɐNJul 6 '10 at 18:43